Wrench sets have a reputation of being impractical to transport and use as a set. Storage packages designed to provide consolidation of the tools are often impractical for actual use as a portable storage device for the collection of tools. Selection of individual tools from the group is hampered by the usual form of packaging. Current storage has been confined primarily to minimizing storage space for the tools, rather than facilitating selection of the tool or individual tools from the group while maintaining the remaining tools in the group in a desired order.
A typical user solution to the access problem is to mount the group of tools on, say, a perforated "peg board". This is a very effective and neat way to store tool sets, but does not afford the ability to transport the tools as a group to the work site in any orderly and accessible manner.
Roll-up cases formed of plastic or fabric with individual pockets are provided. The packaging must be undone and rolled out each time a tool is needed. The package must later be rolled back up for storage. This form of storage device is often temporary due to the use of closed pockets for the individual tools. The pockets will eventually become torn, dirty and greasy, thereby hampering the ability to shift the package from the rolled, storage condition to the unrolled access condition.
Often sets of wrenches will be sold with a metal clip used to hold the wrenches in an organized stack. Such metal clips and associated clamps allow an orderly presentation of the several wrenches within a set. Where they fail is in facilitating quick and easy addition and removal of individual wrenches to and from the stack. The clips are therefor used primarily for extended storage purposes.
Examples of clip arrangements for releasably holding wrenches in stack arrays are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,720,306 and 2,747,730. Both of these references function well to maintain an orderly stack of wrenches but do not present the wrenches in such a manner that any one wrench may be easily and quickly added to or removed from the stack.
Another approach to the above problem has been answered by simply packaging assorted wrenches loosely in a pouch. This approach is substantially simpler than the clip and multiple pouch arrangements. But the wrenches are loose within the pouch and thus any single wrench becomes difficult to find. The pouch type holder becomes quickly oversized when more than one or two wrenches are removed from the pouch. The remaining wrenches become loose within the pouch and may be easily spilled, resulting in loose wrenches throughout the user's toolbox or the adjacent area.
The present releasable portable storage device is presented as a solution to solve the problem of successfully storing closed end wrenches, or similar articles having end openings, in an organized manner for easy portability, that maintains the articles for quick and easy removal from the device, and that facilitates quick and simple mounting of articles to the device.